Thursday, December 2, 2010

I Don't Blame FIFA, Qatar Do Know Their Football

Earlier today, the FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced that Russia would be hosting the 2018 World Cup. I wasn't too surprised at this even though I did think England and their bidding team had just clinched it. But then he went on to announce the nation that would be hosting the 2022 World Cup and amazingly, the nation that came out of the envelope was Qatar.

"We love football","It's part of the fabric of our nation", "We have some fantastic stadia". These were a few things said in some of the bidding teams' presentation. I don't know what Qatar said but I would have loved to seen what they had on offer. Unlike most countries at the moment, they have money. But what they don't have, are the key ingredients to hosting a World Cup. Stadia, passion for the game, knowledge of the game.

Although the line up of bidding nations for the 2022 World Cup was poor, I didn't expect FIFA to give it to Qatar. I thought USA or Australia would have been the safest bet. Do Qatar even have a league never mind a national team. Basically, it's an awful decision. The picture for this post, do you think it looks right?

Russia beat England, Belgium/Holland and Spain/Portugal to get the chance to host the 2018 World Cup. Yet again, I'm quite surprised by this decision. For me, I might be a bit biased when I say this, but England had the best bid on paper and off it. If I have enough money and decide to go over for a game, it might take me twelve hours to get to the next match. It would take that long with a good transport system, so I hope Russia don't have a bad one.